180° Stamp Flip

[PHK]

If I add text with a simple [Ctrl-V] paste to a Pop-Up Note of a Stamp placed on a document page, the whole Stamp flips 180°. What gives?

The orientation in the Style window of the Properties panel says that Rotation is still 0°, but it is actually 180°.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi PHK,

I'm trying to reproduce this but am not having success. You have a stamp, it has a popup wit some text on it, you double click the popup and CTRL+V some text and the original stamp inverts?

PasteIntoStampPopup.gif

Is this file specific or can you do it on a new document? If it is document specific may we have a sample please?

[PHK]

I can do it on a new document or an 'old' one.

The steps are:
1. Create the Stamp in the conventional way.
2. Select the Stamp and place it on a page in the document. See #1.

New Document With Stamp 1.pdf

3. Via the drop-down menu, open the Stamp Pop-Up Note, paste in the text.
4. Close the Pop-Up Note. See #2.

New Document With Stamp 2.pdf

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi PHK,

I get the same as you when using your document but not when I try using any of the default stamps that ship with the Editor. I wonder if it is related to your specific stamp.

Are you able to reproduce this using any of the default stamps that we ship with the product? I am keen to determine if this is related to the stamps themselves.

[PHK]

No, I don't get flipping with provided stamps. See #3.

New Document With Stamp 3.pdf

Obviously, there is a bias against user-created Stamps. Or, at least mine.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Obviously, there is a bias against user-created Stamps. Or, at least mine.

Well hopefully not a bias we cannot overcome.

Do you want to export your stamp and post it or email to us? It should be in either:
C:\Users\paul.PDF-XCHANGE.000\AppData\Roaming\Tracker Software\PDFXEditor\3.0\Stamps
or
C:\Program Files\Tracker Software\PDF Editor\Stamps

[PHK]

...Do you want to export your stamp and post it or email to us? ...

Duh, I'm not sure how to do that.

There was no magic in my creating the Stamp; wouldn't it be better for you guys to create a Stamp from scratch to see if this replicated?

All I did was create the text "Photography", saved it to the Clipboard, and then clicked on the "Add New" icon at the top of the Stamps panel and selected "Add New Stamp from Clipboard".

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, PHK

I cannot reproduce the issue with a stamp I have created here, even using the same text, you mentioned, "Photography" and creating from the clipboard. We will need to see your stamp in order to troubleshoot further, and perhaps seeing your stamp will give us a hint to how we can create one of our own which reproduces this same issue.
To send us the stamp file, you simply need to navigate to one of the folders that Paul mentioned:
(Default location when created within the app)
%appdata%\Tracker Software\PDFXEditor\3.0\Stamps
-or-
(common shared location, used by sysadmins if multiple users on a device need to access the same stamps)
C:\Program Files\Tracker Software\PDF Editor\Stamps

Once you are within the folder, there will be a PDF document with a strange name (possibly more than one if you have a few custom stamps). Select this pdf and open it, to ensure that it is the stamp in question, if it is, please send us that PDF file.

Kind regards,

[PHK]

I'm afraid I shot myself in the foot on this one. I am not really a fluent user of Stamps and it is now clear that I have really wandered out of my comfort zone. I have never messed around with that semi-hidden file where Stamps are stored. Therefore, when Paul asked for a copy my initial reaction was to push back. However, I eventually succumbed to my peril. As I was unfamiliar with the way that file operates I made a serious error.

I didn't really want to share all my Stamps with anybody, no offense. So, I thought I could create a special file for Paul that had the Stamp in question but not some of the others by deleting the no-see Stamps. I did not realize there would be only one file surviving, the latest modified. Now, I have to recreate a couple dozen Stamps. Not happy.

I have used other PDF management software that had Stamps before. However, in that application created stamps were in a user-controllable file that could be named and renamed, stored and moved like any other file. It seems to me that this Stamps sub-app is an area which lags developmentally other areas of the overall product. I am not sure how I want to go forward on this. But I think my first priority is to reproduce the lost Stamps as much as I hate redundant labor.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, PHK

Sorry to hear to had some difficulty with this, As per usual, we take privacy very seriously. If you did not want to share the stamps on the public forums, we would have happily accepted the collection via Email, where we could quickly check it, and then delete the files securely, at your request.

For the future, just in case anything like this comes up again and you wish to modify your stamps, you should know that the "File > manage settings > exports settings" function, offers the ability to include all of you custom stamp collections with the export. That may be helpful as it would allow you to restore them after an event like this.

Kind regards,

[PHK]

Hello, PHK

Sorry to hear to had some difficulty with this, As per usual, we take privacy very seriously. If you did not want to share the stamps on the public forums, we would have happily accepted the collection via Email, where we could quickly check it, and then delete the files securely, at your request.

For the future, just in case anything like this comes up again and you wish to modify your stamps, you should know that the "File > manage settings > exports settings" function, offers the ability to include all of you custom stamp collections with the export. That may be helpful as it would allow you to restore them after an event like this.

Kind regards,

Thanks for that information. However, I did not know that when I was purging my Stamps file of extraneous Stamps. And the those Stamps and the troublesome "Photography" Stamp were all created after I had last saved and "exported" settings. That leaves me having to spend an hour or two recreating the Stamp portfolio now. Maybe the next time I will be wiser.

And it also leaves me wishing PDF-XCE had a more user-controllable file structure for Stamps. We should be able to create and name folders and manage the Stamps within those folders unlike the obscure and destructive single file architecture now in the product.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, PHK

Stamps are organized into a single PDF document each for a collection, with one page representing a single stamp. This is also universally accepted way of handling stamps, you can take stamps that we, or adobe, or foxit have created, and simply drag and drop the PDF files into the respective applications stamps folder, they will be understood and used correctly by any of us.

There is no reason that you need to place all your stamps in the same "collection", when creating them with the Stamp UI. In fact, if you are creating any "dynamic stamps" it is always a good idea to create a separate collection for those stamps, so that the JS contained within each stamp does not interfere with the others; though that can be worked around with some advanced JS knowledge.

In any case, back to the issue you reported earlier. All that we need is a copy of the single, individual stamp, which you found the 180 flip happening with. We do not need the whole collection, and in fact, if you can create a brand new stamp that reproduces this, in it own separate collection to send to us, that would be very useful, as it reduces the variables we need to compare.

Kind regards,

[PHK]

Thanks, Daniel, for trying to explain this to me but I am afraid there are large chunks of the way Stamps work that I still do not understand.

As thing sit right now my Stamps Palette panel shows the Standard and Dynamic Dates groups as the come out of the box, so to speak. In addition, there are two other groups ("collections"?) that I have created one of which contains the troublesome "Photography" Stamp (let's call that Group A) and the other group has some of 'new' Stamps I recreated this afternoon. Let's call that Group B.

Group B looks fine. But Group A has some 'new' Stamps that I created this afternoon and also has some empty, but named, boxes that looks like this:

image.png

There is nothing I can do to clear, or delete the empty boxes.

When it comes to the PDF files in the Appdata folder, I now see two files. One has one group/collection of the stamps I created this afternoon and the other has the other group/collection. But there are just these two files. Whether I open one or the other or both these files, I still have the same Stamps Palette. However, the file with the Group A pages shows only those pages (and thumbnails) for the newly-created Stamps; there are no thumbnails or pages for the blank Stamps.

I have looked at the on-line manual and that doesn't help much, either. I just do not understand what is going on here; sorry to be so dense.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, PHK

New additions to stamp collections are saved during closing of the application, they are held in memory until then, as if you had opened up any other PDF document. As such, if you have just made changes to a file, and then, without closing and re-opening the editor, you went to the stamps folder and tried to open that collection, you would still see the old version of the file.

I will not deny that stamps are a convoluted mess, but they are that way because of the intricacies in how they need to be created/modified. If you look to Adobe or Foxit, both require the same extended process to create, modify, and alter stamps after creation. it is often easier to simply make a new stamp, than it is to try and modify an existing one. If you ever consider trying to create dynamic stamps, there are multiple steps, which do involve closing the software, moving the stamp file to a new location, opening it, making changes, closing the software again, and then placing the stamp file back in its original location.

If that sounded confusing, that is because it is confusing, not because you are being dense. We are looking at options to streamline, this, but it is both highly complex, and low priority.
If you do want to learn a bit more about stamp structure, these articles may help:
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowle ... Stamp-Tool
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowle ... nge-Editor
https://www.pdf-xchange.com/knowle ... p-Creation

If you ever wish to delete a stamp from a collection, it should be done from the Stamps palette, so that we can properly update the stamp collection files with the required metadata. This is done by opening the stamps palette, then clicking the problematic stamp, and clicking delete:

image.png

Kind regards,

[PHK]

...If you ever wish to delete a stamp from a collection, it should be done from the Stamps palette, so that we can properly update the stamp collection files with the required metadata. This is done by opening the stamps palette, then clicking the problematic stamp, and clicking delete:
image.png

Kind regards,

Thanks, Daniel.

I HAD deleted the stamps from the Stamps palette (I wouldn't know anything else to do), but I had not CLOSED the application. When I did that today and re-opened, those empty boxes were gone, thank goodness. Therefore, one less issue from me.

And thanks for confirming that the whole Stamps thing needs work. I confirm that more refinement is in order and I sympathize.

With regard to the flipping Photography stamp, I will try to get around to sending that in. Before I do that, I may experiment with other stamps I have created to see I can dimension issue somewhat better than I have so far.

[Daniel - PDF-XChange]

Hello, PHK

Keep me posted about the stamp flipping issue on your end, I will keep an eye out.

Kind regards,

[PHK]

UPDATE: In short, I can no longer reproduce The Flip. Although I have many from the vintage of 6 or 7 days ago, the new Stamps, or even old Stamps, no longer flip when I add content to the Pop-Up. Therefore, let's consider this a one-off aberation.

Just as background to the extent it is relevant, this is what I was doing. I am cataloguing a small library of about 1,100 volumes. They are spread over about twenty sub-locations (shelves and positions on the shelves). Everything is in one PDF file, with each volume represented by an image of the cover or, if that is not useful, the spine or even the title page. Unfortunately, I have found that the human memory (or at least mine) does not have the ability to connect easily the book images in this virtual library index to the real books in the physical library.

Therefore, I have made a Stamp for each sub-location and attach it to the respective page and the Stamps are saved on a layer specific to the sub-location. In that way, the visibility of the Stamps can be toggled on or off. I use the Stamp Pop-Up to include further information, mostly the page number of where the volume is located in the file. Besides location Stamps I also have made a family of genre Stamps, such as the "Photography" Stamp, in the same fashion and these genre also have their own dedicated layers.

Obviously as a PDF-XCE user, I could use just the Stamps to navigate around the file. But the intent is to have the PDF file available to others who are not blessed with a copy of PDDF-XCE so I also have to create a Bookmark structure that is useable in more lame PDF viewing applications. But having these location and genre Stamps is the first step to creating that sort of structure. I will make all Stamps invisible in the final exported virtual library index file, relying on just the Bookmarks for navigation of the file.

[Puffolino]

Played around a little bit, the only thing I could image is that the document has been rotated by 180° and the view as well - then the issue would seen when copying a stamp from another (not rotated) document.

[PHK]

Thanks for considering this but no documentation rotation was involved.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

Hi PHK

I was also thinking there must have been at some point a document rotation, but as you say there was no page rotation involved.

So, if the issue is no longer reproducible then I agree that maybe we should chalk tis one un to "unknown" and revisit it if the issue returns.

[Paul - PDF-XChange]

For anyone following this, I was misunderstanding the issue. I thought it was related to a JavaScript dialogue but was in fact triggered by use of the annotation's popup that appears when you double click an annotation.

It has been reproduced and has an associated ticket and will be fixed.

Referring to RTRT#5966: Issue with stamp rotation after popup used will facilitate any support staff member getting you a status report.

I hope that helps.